I wouldn't be surprised if they were all still alive. They owed Lightning a costume for completing a side-quest, and this was the best they could come up with. Now if all of them were equipped with Snow Mufflers then Lightning would literally become the Juggernaut Bitch! She could just bullrush Behemoths and cast them aside like blowup dolls.

Honestly, that is probably a little better than I would have expected. It managed to keep 50% of the fans from FFXIII-2. That is a lot better than FXIII-2 managed. The third in a trilogy is almost always going to be the worst performing.

FWIW I thought XIII-2 was a great RPG, better than XIII in pretty much every way possible.

I don't think Lightning Returns will be able to top it. But that's probably because I fell in love with all the time travel (and the ability to *re-do* a time/place scenario to open alternate paths). Not sure how Lightning Returns will hold my interest. But we'll see!

I got it preordered and I heard the Cloud preorder DLC is actually really good.... but yeah, the more I hear between dubious plot elements, half-baked gameplay, and technical issues, I think I'm gonna wait till it's $20 or less -- I think I'll justify it more there.

And I did like FF13-2 as well (well, not so much its plot... amusing? Definitely. Well-written? Aaaaoo?)